Kathy Fowler is leaving her position of assistant head librarian of the Arkansas history and genealogy department at the Pope County Library after 21⁄2 years. Today is her last day.

“I will miss the people the most,” she said. “It’s a good group of people to work with and it has been a pleasure to work with the patrons.”

Fowler said she has seen a lot of changes in her relatively short time at the library.

“There’s a lot more programming now,” she said. “There’s more focus on outreach to patrons and on research. The collection in our department has grown tremendously.”

The collection includes books and family files with historical and genealogical information donated by members of the community.

“The community’s donations are very important,” Fowler said. “It’s a way to document the history of the community and it gives them a safe place to preserve those documents.”

She said people donate books, family papers, historical documents about the county and photographs.

“We’d love to get more photographs,” she said.

Fowler said the public’s interest in genealogy has increased a lot in recent years because of Alex Haley’s novel “Roots” and television shows about the topic.

“There have been a lot of shows about genealogy such as ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’,” she said. “The show started in England and [actress] Lisa Kudrow saw it and started it here.”

She said improvements in technology and the advent of websites such as www.ancestry.com has also helped its growing popularity.

“As the Internet made information easily accessible, genealogy became more than a fun hobby,” she said. “People are interested in finding out where their families are from and the Internet makes it easy.”

She said in the past, a person researching his family’s history would have to order microfilm and go through a lot of unrelated information. Now people can access pertinent information at one site.

“You start with your parents and gather as much information as you can,” she said. “Then you interview the older members of the family and look for documents like wills and birth certificates. Then you come here to the library. We have a number of county records on microfilm. You can bring in a flash drive and save the information to it or email it to yourself from the microfilm.”

Library patrons can also find genealogy information on the library’s site, www.popelibrary.org, from any location for free by logging in with their library card numbers.

Fowler said the site isn’t as extensive as www.ancestry.com, but that it offers “substantial records” and the library houses even more information.

“The library has an excellent collection,” she said. “It’s one of the best collections you’ll find without going to a larger institution.”

Charity Park, head librarian of Arkansas history and genealogy, said the library is planning to expand the genealogy department.

“We’re going to have a virtual exhibit online with our postcard collections,” she said.

Park said the collection boasts a postcard from May Russell, the granddaughter of Russellville’s namesake, Thomas Russell.

Park said the library plans to fill Fowler’s position in a few weeks.

“The ideal candidate is somebody who has strong research skills and is up to date on current trends in archival technology,” she said. “Someone that loves history and genealogy.”